1. Field
The present invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for discovering a communication entity and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for discovering a communication entity, which can provide efficient and reliable communication between communication nodes requiring interaction in a complex system composed of large-scale physical nodes.
2. Description of Related Art
When communication entities that are targets to be connected are directly recognized and connection information thereof is managed upon establishing a communication connection, a communication connection needs only to be directly established based on connection information if interaction is required. However, as the number of communication entities constituting the entire application domain has rapidly increased, the number of data types to be exchanged and the number of services to be provided has also rapidly increased. Accordingly, it is difficult for individual nodes to manage such data types and services on the whole, and pieces of data and a number of services provided/requested for respective nodes may vary depending on the states of the nodes, thus making it realistically impossible for each node to previously set/manage information about counterpart communication entities to which the corresponding node is to be connected. In order to perform such a function, communication middleware has appeared, and Data Distribution Service (DDS) technology standardized by Object Management Group (OMG) has been widely used based on the field of national defense. Further, in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2008-0001144 or the like, a method of recognizing a communication entity which will request/provide the corresponding data or service at the time at which data or service is actually required and searching for connection information about the corresponding entity has been introduced. Since a method of discovering a communication entity must find connection information about a target entity in a state in which the target entity is not recognized, two types of methods are chiefly used. One is a method of requesting information related to a communication connection from unspecified communication entities constituting the entire application domain and receiving a response to the request in a multicasting/broadcasting manner. The other is a method of providing a server at the center of the domain, registering data or service information to be provided/requested by the corresponding node itself on the server, searching for the data or service information, and acquiring connection information about a counterpart communication entity have been chiefly used. As in the case of the latter, when the server is placed at the center, there is a disadvantage in that when the server is not desirably operated, it is difficult to execute the entire application. In the case of the former, distributed processing is possible, so that, even if a specific node is malfunctioning, there is little influence exerted on the entire application, but there is a disadvantage in that, when a network to connect communication entities constituting the entire application domain does not support broadcasting or multicasting, it is difficult to apply the former method.